Beijing’s Marketing Manager: Wang Huning

Chinese leader Xi Jinping (L) and member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee Wang Huning (R) arrive at the closing session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, China, on March 13, 2015. (Feng Li/Getty Images)

Commentary

To the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), recognized guides to action are Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Three Represents, the Scientific Outlook on Development, and Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era (Xi Thought), as stated in its constitution.

Behind the Party’s guides, Wang Huning is the pen for the Three Represents, the Scientific Outlook on Development, and Xi Thought.

Wang, the strategist serving three CCP leaders, Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao, and Xi Jinping, helped to package their thoughts as they guide Party members. Some people actually nicknamed the writings as “Wang Huning Thought.”

Speedy Production

Wang was originally a professor in International Politics. In 1995, Jiang Zemin brought him to the Central Policy Research Office (Office). He became the director of the Office and held the position for 26 years, the longest term in CCP history, until Oct. 2020.

Deng Xiaoping, the second-generation leadership core of the CCP, died in 1997.

In the 1997 meeting of the CCP’s rubber-stamp legislature after Deng’s death, Jiang Zemin touted Deng Xiaoping Theory as the only guidance for the Party’s fate and future.

However, in just five years, Jiang provided the Party members his own guidance, the Three Represents.

It took 24 years to establish Maoism officially, considering that the CCP was founded in 1921 and was made public in 1945; it took 20 years to formulate Deng Xiaoping Theory, adding up from 1977 when Deng took power until his guidance was institutionalized into the CCP Constitution in 1997.

Jiang Zemin won Deng’s recognition for his contribution during the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. Up until 1997, Jiang would have abided by Deng’s Theory.

Therefore, it took only five years (1997–2002) to formulate Jiang’s Three Represents, five years (2002–2007) to develop Hu Jintao’s Scientific Outlook on Development, and another five years to compose Xi Thought.

Mao has his unbeatable status in the CCP. None of his successors could surpass him in regarding the influence and seniority in the history of the Party. However, Jiang, Hu, and Xi beat him in the speedy production of their individual versions of the Party’s guidance.

In fact, these Party’s guidelines are Wang’s renovations—through packaging new phrases carrying the same old concepts of Marxism-Leninism.

Xi Jinping was born in 1953. Mao’s series of political campaigns resulted in Xi’s innate cultural deficiencies from lack of education.

In 1975, Xi was admitted to Tsinghua University as a worker-peasant-soldier student. That is, his admission was not based on his academic merit, but rather the “class” of his parents. As for his political track, from local governments in Hebei, Fujian, Zhejiang, to Shanghai and Beijing, it could only be described as mediocre.

I believe there are three reasons why Xi became a CCP leader: First, his father Xi Zhongxun was a liberal veteran; second, Xi was relatively low-key; third, Bo Xilai, the other possible successor and a princeling, was too flashy.

During Xi’s first term (2012-2017), he focused on seizing power from Jiang Zemin through the campaign of anti-corruption, refusing to serve as a puppet of Jiang like his predecessor Hu Jintao. His various talks about Marxism at the time could have been prepared by Wang Huning.

After Wang became a member of the Standing Committee of the Politburo in charge of ideology work in 2017, he began to intoxicate Xi with Marxism.

Since then, the CCP has “declared war” on all believers in gods, on capitalist Hong Kong, capitalist Taiwan, and capitalist America; and engaged in wolf warrior diplomacy, domestic brutal suppression, and publicizing “dare to fight and good at fighting.”

Youths at a rally during the height of the Red Guard upheaval waving copies Mao's Little Red Book and carrying a poster of Karl Marx on Sept. 14, 1966. The Cultural Revolution set off a decade of violence and tumult to achieve communist goals and enforce a radical egalitarianism. (AP Photo)

Marxism’s Marketing Manager

On April 23, 2018, the Politburo held a collective study session on “The Communist Manifesto and its contemporary significance,” which touted Marx’s atheism, anti-capitalism, and philosophy of violence and struggle.

On May 4, 2018, Xi made a remark on the 200th anniversary of Marx’s birth: “A great veneration” to “the greatest thinker of modern times,” and “a scientific theory firmly held by the CCP.”

I am fairly certain that Wang organized and finalized the composition of Xi’s address.

In the Third Historical Resolution that the CCP adopted on Nov. 11, the most prominent figure was not Xi, but Marx. In the resolution, Xi’s name appeared 22 times while Marx’s appeared 44 times.

This resolution was undoubtedly composed by a writing team led by Wang.

Marx declared in his Communist Manifesto: “The communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.”

To put it bluntly, the communists aim to destroy all governments in the world with violence.

It can be said that more than 170 years ago, Marx was the enemy of all states in the world.

Today, more than 170 years later, Wang Huning, the chief ideological director of CCP, has become the heir of Marx. He created new phrases to package Marx’s theory into the Three Represents, the Scientific Outlook on Development, and Xi Thought.

While the CCP welcomes its 100 years of founding, the Party keeps touting various new phrases, and carrying on as a firm follower of Marxism.

Robert O’Brien, then National Security Advisor of the Trump administration made a remark on June 24, 2020, reflecting “the greatest failure of American foreign policy since the 1930s,” was “because we did not pay heed to the CCP’s ideology.”

He stated, “Let us be clear, the Chinese Communist Party is a Marxist-Leninist organization.”

Indeed, the CCP is exactly a regime upholding the ideology of Marxism-Leninism, for the purpose of “forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions,” and replacing them with communism.

The 170 plus years of international communist movement finally failed when the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe collapsed in the late 1990s.

But, the specter of Marx survived through Wang Huning’s mind and his pen, and was infused into the guidance of Jiang, Hu, and Xi, and finally the new phrase—community of shared future for mankind.

The community of shared future for mankind is the modern version of George Orwell’s “1984.”

Today in the 21st century, the CCP has turned the fictional story in “1984” into reality: The 1.4 billion Chinese are deprived of their freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from want, and freedom from fear. China has been turned into a “big prison” by the CCP.

Wang Huning is the modern day marketing manager of Marxism, an ideology looking to carry on the mission of ruining the world.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.